Pantami Commends
Pantami Commends NITDA for Driving Digital Economy
Through Local Contents Promotion
Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr. Isa Ali
Ibrahim Pantami, has commended the National Information Technology
Development Agency (NITDA) for championing strategic efforts geared
towards increasing the pool of Nigerians with indigenous digital
contents and skills.
The Minister said this during the virtual ‘NITDA Stakeholders’
Meetup and Hangout’ with the theme, “Leveraging Indigenous
Technologies to Enhance Educational Development”.
Dr Pantami said that, “it is heartwarming to note that NITDA has
taken strategic steps towards developing indigenous digital
learning platform for rural communities in Nigeria, adding that,
the urgent need for upskilling solutions to close the digital
skills gap at this time cannot be over emphasized.”
Noting that this move is for Nigeria to seamlessly transit into
a digitally-driven economy, Abdullahi said attaining such feat
could not have come at a better time.
Earlier, the Director General of NITDA, Mallam Kashifu Inuwa
Abdullahi, while delivering his remarks gave an insight to how the
Agency has been championing the course for the adoption of
indigenous technology with focus on education sector due to the
outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic which has disrupted conventional
education system, and revolutionizing digital and online learning
globally.
Mal. Abdullahi said the agency’s next strategic action is to
organize innovation challenge on indigenous solution that can help
develop digital learning platform for rural communities in Nigeria,
noting that the Federal Government was also doing everything
possible to ensure that young and underprivileged children stay in
school and have access to good education.
“At our ministry and NITDA we also responded by launching
virtual learning platforms for our citizen to spend their time
meaningfully out of school. Our platforms are aimed at reskilling
and upskilling our citizens with digital skill for post covid-19
world and future of work. As of this morning we have 24,372 active
students learning under NITDA Academy”, he added
The DG revealed that, “the aim of the meetup is to kill two
birds with one stone, which are to open a discussion on how we can
leverage emerging technologies to build an affordable indigenous
solution to address the current global learning crisis using
indigenous solutions, and to encourage and incentivize our
innovative citizens to develop marketable products and services
using emerging technologies.”